


Harlequin's Isle

by saltwaterselkie



Category: Batman (Comics), Harley Quinn (Comics), Poison Ivy (Comics)
Genre: Airplane Crashes, Airplanes, BAMF Poison Ivy, Canon-Typical Violence, Declarations Of Love, Desert Island Fic, Established Relationship, F/F, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Poisonquinn - Freeform, harlivy - Freeform, red diamond, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25325080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltwaterselkie/pseuds/saltwaterselkie
Summary: Ivy falls out of a plane. Harley's not happy about it.
Relationships: Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel
Comments: 155
Kudos: 249





	1. Flight or Fight?

**Author's Note:**

> For those who followed Tennessee Ham and Strawberry Jam, expect a much more Plot Lite™ type fic. Yes, there's plot, but this is (planned to be) a much shorter fic, so be prepared for not as many twists and turns. Updates? They'll come when they come, don't have a plan for it atm. Expect at least once a week, probably twice and/or more, but no guarantees ¯_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> -Selkie

Ivy was always nervous on planes. And while Harley understood it – airborne, after all, was the furthest from her plants Ivy ever got – she did find it kinda… um… _endearing_.

To put it simply, she didn’t mind Ivy clutching her arm as the plane took off, or the fact that she hadn’t taken her hand off Harley’s knee since they’d gone up in the air.

They were flying out to Costa Rica from Gotham, so at least Ivy had something to look forward to. It was going to be a vacation – an anniversary of sorts. Two years since Joker died and Harley took to the streets a free woman, chained to nothing and no one. She’d finally taken the issue of Mistah Jay into her own hands and look what she had to show for it: Ivy.

Ivy, who’d always been there to pick her up when he pushed her down. Ivy, who’d healed Harley’s wounds and supported her as Harley slowly grew into a woman who was willing and able to take down the Clown Prince of Crime. Ivy, who happened to be really, really good at kissing and… other stuff.

Harley still didn’t know how she’d gotten so lucky, to be dating fucking _Poison Ivy_ , of all people. Fucking Poison Ivy. _Yeah,_ she thought, snickering to herself, _I’m doing that too._

Ivy had tainted her skin back to its smooth brown tan, a pallor she could maintain with mild concentration for as long as she wanted it to stay that way. Given that they were flying commercial – albeit in a relatively small plane – green was not the way to go. Her red hair was tied back in a fluffy ponytail that Harley, every so often, got the urge to run her fingers through. So far she’d resisted. Mostly.

She knew Ivy had brought two inconspicuous little vines with her, probably currently wrapped around her forearms under her jacket. It was kinda cute – a safety blanket, of sorts. A comfort, when she was so far out of her element.

Harley had at first suggested a cruise. “Harley,” Ivy had said, incredibly patiently, “do you have any idea how much _shit_ those ships dump in the ocean every single day?”

Harley, who did not in fact know how much shit those ships dumped in the ocean every single day, switched tack immediately. “How about flying?”

“And support the massive greenhouse gas emissions airlines don’t care about? Try again.”

But the promise of an international vacation was alluring, and Harley had finally been able to talk Pam around. She’d tried seduction, at first, but unfortunately it hadn’t worked. Well… it had worked in _other_ ways, none of them having to do with a vacation flight. What _had_ panned out was when Harley threw a newspaper down like a gauntlet in front of Ivy at the kitchen table, the morning after they’d hit Gotham National Bank for all it was worth.

“Roxy Rocket Rockets to Stardom with Rocket Sponsorship?”

“No,” Harley pointed at the newspaper impatiently, “the article _below_ that.”

“Wayne Enterprises Flies High. Bruce Wayne announced yesterday that he has set a date to exhibit the world’s first carbon neutral airplane, courtesy of the Wayne Foundation. Tickets will be offered starting…” Pam fell silent, reading through the rest of the article by herself. “Hmm,” she said. It was a _hmm_ that gave Harley hope – not the Disappointed Pam Hmm or the Annoyed Pam Hmm but the Interested Pam Hmm. A good Hmm indeed.

So here they were, seated aboard the inaugural flight. Harley had needed to pull a few strings to snag tickets – they’d sold within minutes, and she hadn’t been fast enough to get them online – but she was basically the queen of Gotham’s underworld at the moment, and it hadn’t been too much of a pain in the ass. And what luck that it was headed to Costa Rica, home of some of the most beautiful botanical specimens on Earth. Ivy hadn’t been able to shut up about it.

At least, not until they got on the plane.

Harley leaned over to her right and kissed Ivy on the cheek. “ _Loosen up, Red,_ ” she teased. Ivy’s only response was to give Harley’s thigh a squeeze.

It was a little weird, the two of them on board – most of the tickets for the plane’s maiden voyage through the skies had either been snapped up by the personal assistants of Gotham’s elite or later bought at vast markups by the same. So it was she and Ivy in their casual wear versus maybe twenty other people all wearing variations on a suit and tie.

Harley had noticed at least five Rolexes as she and Ivy found their seats. If they weren’t flying incognito on the same plane, Harley would’ve been very tempted to rob it.

She leaned her head on Ivy’s shoulder and twined their fingers together, tracing a pattern on Ivy’s palm. She could feel Ivy relax as she did it, and that was really enough for Harley.

Ivy always got anxious on planes. It was worse the higher up they flew. She’d been part plant for so long that she told Harley getting on a plane felt like, in Pam’s words, “having part of my soul ripped out.”

“Isn’t that a little graphic, Pam-a-lamb?” Harley had asked.

Ivy shook her head. “Not when it’s accurate.”

It got worse the higher they ascended. Now, at cruising altitude, Ivy hadn’t stopped gritting her teeth in what felt like forever.

“ _Think about your vines,”_ Harley whispered, sneaking one of her hands up under Pam’s sleeve to trace her finger across a vine. Ivy shivered. “It’ll be okay _,_ ” Harley said, pressing a soft kiss onto Ivy’s cheek.

Ivy gave her a smile that was half-grimace. Still, it was a valiant effort. Harley smiled back encouragingly.

“So,” Ivy said, making an obvious effort to distract herself, “who’d you peg as the richest ones on the plane?”

“Easy. Broad with the vintage mink in the front row. Old money, for sure.”

Ivy raised an eyebrow. “You sure, Harls? My money’s on the young man behind her. Recognize him?”

“Who? The scrawny teen?” Harley wrinkled her nose. “He looks like he went way too hard with daddy’s mousse.”

“Way too hard with daddy’s _mouse_ , daisy,” Ivy said. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s Rowan Rue. Inventor of…”

“Oh fuck. That dude made my phone.”

“Close, but incorrect,” Ivy said, tapping a finger on Harley’s knee. “ _That dude_ , as you so eloquently identified him, underpaid his technicians to invent your phone and hired children in foreign countries to manufacture it. _They_ made the product. He simply used their labor to enrich himself.”

“Capitalism,” Harley said sagely, figuring it was a safe response.

Ivy snickered. “Exactly. Capitalism.”

“Regardless, he’s worth a buttload of cash,” Harley said, eying the man. He was shifting anxiously in his seat, drumming his fingers against his thigh.

“Net worth $3 billion.”

“What say we give kidnapping a try when we land?” Harley raised an eyebrow at Pam mischievously, nudging her shoulder. “Though more like man-napping. He’s like mid-thirties, right? He must hit up the botox every other day for that babyface.”

Ivy rolled her eyes, then looked at Harley pointedly. “That’s for the joke. The kidnapping, on the other hand, is not half bad as an idea.”

The plane jumped with a swell of turbulence and Ivy’s fingers clenched in Harley’s thigh muscle. Harley winced but didn’t say anything; the levity of the moment had dissipated the moment Pam was reminded of how high up they were. And over water, no less – they were making their way across the Gulf of Mexico, and that meant Pam was nearly as far from the Green as she could be.

Harley glanced up the aisle, trying to find something interesting and distraction-worthy. There wasn’t much to speak of. Most of the rich people were snoozing or schmoozing with each other. Disgusting.

But then… “Oh, look,” Harley said, pointing towards the front. “Snacks.”

The snack cart was being pushed out through the royal blue curtains that sectioned the front of the plane off from the passenger’s cabin.

The moment the stewardess came into view pushing it, though, Harley knew something was wrong.

The woman was terrified. It was plain on her face as she shuffled forward through the curtain. The cords in her neck were tense, and her jaw was set.

“ _Ivy,_ ” Harley said, and Pam’s eyes found the stewardess immediately. Her brow furrowed, the look in her eyes suspicious; she saw exactly what Harley did.

And then Harley didn’t have to worry any longer _why_ the woman was scared out of her mind, because as she stepped further into the aisle, it was clear she wasn’t _stepping_ at all. She was being pushed.

By a man in a crisp black suit, pressing a gun in between the poor woman’s shoulder blades. He was wearing a red harlequin mask. (Harley was well aware of the irony.)

“HELLO EVERYBODY,” the man boomed, and suddenly the cabin was quiet as passengers turned to look at him, comprehension dawning. One woman shrieked; the man just waited stoically for a few seconds before continuing. “I EXPECT YOU UNDERSTAND WHY I’M HERE, BUT FOR THE DULLARDS WHO DO NOT, I’LL JUST MAKE IT A PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT.”

He cracked a grin like he didn’t have a care in the world and flicked another gun out of its holster, wielding both with the air of a man whose many victims had said their last prayers staring down those barrels. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,” the masked man said, “THIS IS A HOLDUP.”

“ _Well, fuck_ ,” Harley whispered to Ivy, “ _Someone else beat us to it.”_


	2. Bullets and Ballistics

Harley stared at the man for a moment, assessing him. Yes, he looked like he knew his way around a gun, but she’d faced many men of that type, and she thought she could probably handle him in a usual situation. But now? With the plane rocking on uncertain air and the firepower in his favor?

And then Harley looked at Ivy.

Ivy’s expression said _this isn’t happening right now_. It was the kind of face that promised hell to whoever tried to make Pam’s flight experience even _worse_ than it already inherently was.

“ _We gotta be careful, Pam,”_ Harley said, giving her hand a quick squeeze.

“Oh, to hell with that,” Ivy said.

Any other time, Harley thought, Ivy would’ve taken her time to assess the situation. She was a genius; that was what she did. But her nerves, already ragged from the hours they’d been aboard the plane, seemed to have brought her to a breaking point. The man was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Ivy unbuckled her seatbelt and stood up.

 _“Fuck_ ,” Harley muttered. _She_ was usually the impetuous bad-decision maker. Ivy was supposed to be the one with the level head! She was supposed to be the deescalator when things needed deescalating.

The man had zeroed in on Ivy as soon as she stood. He laughed, leveling a gun at her. “Oh, wonderful,” he said, “we have a volunteer.”

“Fuck off, you two-bit goon,” Ivy said, rolling her eyes.

“And who the hell do you think you are, little girl?” The man’s eyes narrowed. Harley got the feeling he wasn’t used to being talked back to by someone he was holding at gunpoint. It was probably throwing him off his rhythm.

Ivy sighed, sounding so exasperated you’d think she wasn’t in the middle of an armed robbery. “Who am I?” She reached up and pulled her hair tie off, shaking her head so her red hair fell loose. At the same time, Harley could see that she was letting her “normal” skin color seep away, replaced by the vibrant green. She shrugged off her jacket and exposed the vines on her arms, rolling her shoulders as the plants reared up to her call. The vines wound all the way up to her biceps reminiscent of armor, writhing like snakes.

Ivy flicked a lock of hair behind her ear and narrowed her eyes right back at the man. “I’m Poison fucking Ivy. And you’re interrupting my vacation.”

Harley was incredibly attracted to Pam right then. If the situation hadn’t been progressing as it was, she would’ve pulled Ivy back down to the seats to join the Mile High Club right there and then, privacy be damned.

“Poison Ivy!” One of the passengers yelled, pointing at her. “She’s behind this!”

“Oh my _God,”_ Ivy spat out, turning towards the passenger, “why do rich people lack both critical thinking skills _and_ the ability to _pay attention_?” Her vines were slowly growing in length as her anger mounted. “I’m not behind this, I’m _stopping_ this, you idiot,” Ivy snapped.

She’d let herself get distracted. And while Ivy was watching the passenger, Harley was watching the man.

He’d tucked away the gun and had something in his hand. He smirked at Ivy. “Stop _this_ ,” he said.

And then he threw the bomb.

It was a small bomb, which was good. It was a bomb thrown in a plane, which was bad. Very, very bad.

Ivy’s reflexes were good, but barely good enough. She slapped the bomb aside and dove on top of Harley.

With a deep _boom_ , the bomb blew a hole in the side of the plane.

Harley could feel the impact hit Ivy, but more importantly, she could feel the sucking as the pressurized cabin was punctured. The air outside just begged for her to join it, but she was still attached securely to her seat by her belt. People were screaming, men and women alike; the gunman himself was looking fairly regretful, anchoring himself to the seats next to him as the stewardess latched on to an armrest, shrieking.

One man who hadn’t been securely fastened, sitting too close to the hole, was sucked out. Harley winced as the plane shuddered; it seemed the man (or his body) had done something to an engine.

The plane tilted wildly to the left, and Harley’s stomach jumped with the movement. It steadied out after a moment, but she could feel that they were losing altitude. And fast.

All that for a little bomb.

Ivy’s vines were nearly full-fledged now. They wrapped tightly around her arms and wrists, tethering her to a few solid seats as she stood. Now that Ivy was standing, Harley could see that her back was singed – she was healing quickly, as always, but the skin was raw and red. It made Harley angry, but it seemed Ivy was angrier.

“FUCKING HELL, THIS WAS A NEW BLOUSE,” Pam yelled, her volume barely high enough to be heard over the sucking of the hole. The gunman didn’t look like he was regretting his decision, which made Harley very nervous.

The weapons _she’d_ snuck onto the plane as a matter of course were tucked in a bag she’d shoved into the storage compartments above her head. She really, really regretted that.

She calmly but quickly unbuckled her seatbelt, keeping a strong hold on her armrests, and, using only one hand at a time, pulled the seat out from under her. It doubled as a flotation device; all the seats on the plane did. Harley wasn’t sure if she’d need it, but she figured that readying it was the best she could do at the moment to stay prepared.

If the plane was going to crash into the shimmering blue gulf she’d been admiring just moments before, she was going to make sure she was as buoyant as a rubber ducky. She and Ivy could make it on just one flotation device; her thoughts were as wild and chaotic as the wind rushing through her hair, but she held onto that idea. That she could make sure they’d be okay.

Harley hooked an arm through one of the straps on the seat. Crucially, this meant she had let go with one hand and was holding herself in the plane with just one other.

Then, many things happened at once.

Ivy growled and extended a hand to send a vine towards the gunman.

The plane bucked.

Harley lost her grip on her armrest and fell towards the hole.

Harley didn’t know if Ivy’s instincts were incredible _all_ the time, or if they were especially so when Harley was in danger. Whatever it was, Pam seemed to sense what was happening. She spun, the vine intended for the gunman reaching out for Harley instead. Harley grabbed it frantically, the flotation device still clutched in one hand.

That was when the gunman shot Ivy.

The vine that kept Ivy tethered to her seat made her a sitting duck now. It wasn’t just one bullet; Ivy was peppered by them, her body jerking with each hit. Harley screamed. Pam’s face contorted, her vine loosening as the gunman stopped shooting.

And then she lost her hold on her seat, and that was that: she tumbled into Harley, and they flew out the hole in the side of the plane together. The wind whipped Harley’s pigtails into her face, gusting angrily at her limbs. Her eyes watered, her mouth went dry. As they plummeted through the air, the plane getting smaller and smaller above them as they whirled uncontrollably, Harley was fully aware she was going to die.

And then Ivy’s eyes snapped open. They glowed green. And Harley felt a tug as Pam’s vines wriggled onto _Harley’s_ shoulders, growing and melding in a lattice until they were attached to her and only her.

Harley realized it just as Ivy finished. In the middle of the air, while they were falling, Ivy had manufactured a goddamn _parachute_ out of the only plants she had at her disposal. And she hadn’t done it for herself.

She’d done it for Harley.

Until that moment, Harley thought that the most basic human instinct was self-preservation. She thought that when it came down to it, humans would sacrifice others to save themselves. True altruism didn’t exist – Harleen Quinzel may have gotten her PhD in psychology, but even she knew that most “altruistic” actions were taken to assure one’s genes would be passed down. Whether it was saving a child or a sister, relatives were usually the ones to benefit from sacrificial acts. Nobody Harley knew would ever give themselves up for her. Especially not any of the villains.

Except that what Harley thought didn’t apply to Ivy. Maybe it never had.

The parachute spread open, yanking at Harley with the speed at which it halted her velocity. They were still falling too fast; Ivy’s grip on Harley and the vines was tight, but not enough so. Harley locked her hand like a vise around Ivy’s wrist, and just in time. Because that was when Ivy’s eyes closed, and she let go.

Harley knew immediately she wouldn’t be able to keep her grip. Ivy’s wrist was slick with blood; all her weight in Harley’s hand was not an equation that would have a happy solution. Harley’s mind flashed through her options, and before she could hesitate, she pushed the strap of the flotation device from her arm onto Pam’s. She couldn’t do much more but try to hold on.

A few seconds later, Ivy slipped.

Harley opened her mouth in a silent cry, reaching for Ivy, but the parachute had done its duty with a lighter package and puffed up to hold her weight. Ivy was already just a speck below her. Falling towards the blue expanse below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so... the Thing is happening. You know, the Thing where I decide a fic is going to be eight chapter and then suddenly it's nine, then ten, then eleven...
> 
> This may be a longer ride than anticipated. Hope y'all are up for it :)


	3. Motion of the Ocean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Too bad Harley was a gymnast and not a swimmer...

When Harley finally hit the water, it wasn’t a moment too soon.

She’d been doing her best to get down faster ever since Ivy had dropped. Unfortunately, most of Harley’s ideas about doing that entailed getting loose of the parachute, which in turn meant she herself would plummet into the ocean. And from up here, she’d splat flatter than a pancake.

She hated thinking that. _Ivy_ might’ve splatted flatter than a pancake. But if she hadn’t, if her crazy super awesome metahuman powers had kept her in a shape that Harley could save, if her arm hadn’t slipped out of the flotation device, if she hadn’t been eaten by sharks… if, if, if. If Pam was still alive, Harley couldn’t risk not being ready and healthy to help her when she landed.

Harley had needed to take physics in undergrad. It felt like forever ago, but she knew the basics: she and Pam had exited the plane at the same time with the same trajectory. So barring strong winds on Harley’s part or enthusiastic tides on Ivy’s, Harley should have landed near where Pam did.

It was when Harley was near to the surface of the ocean that she spotted Ivy. Ivy was still attached to the seat, but even from here, there was a dark green sheen staining the surface of the ocean around her that Harley thought was probably her strange, toxic blood. There was too much of it. Way too much.

 _Fuck_ , Harley thought, tugging at the vines to try to get the parachute to bring her closer towards Ivy. _Just our goddamn luck that all this happened in a plane over the ocean._ Ivy’s two worst locations in terms of her powers. If the plane had still been on the ground, the gunman wouldn’t have stood a chance; any plant within range would’ve been all over him. And though Ivy had always been good at coaxing seaweed to do her bidding, Harley was pretty sure it was too far away to do much for her in the middle of the ocean. Not to mention that Ivy would have to be _conscious_ to take advantage of that, and Harley wasn’t willing to bet that she was.

She winced as she thought of the salt lapping against Pam’s wounds. Ivy always got dehydrated quickly; she only enjoyed food with salt when it was minimal, and even then she preferred unsalted meals. Something about plants not liking it.

Harley was pretty sure the current situation was too salty for Pam’s taste.

If all other factors had to be against them today, at the very least the wind had picked up, pushing Harley and her vegetative parachute towards Pam.

The moment her feet hit the water, her shoes instantly soaked in brine, Harley was pulling at her arms to try to get out of the parachute. It gripped her fiercely, but when the parachute itself hit the water, the tension holding Harley in the vines loosened. She tugged out of it, ducking under the water to do so, and came up gasping.

She hadn’t gone swimming in ages. _Why haven’t I gone swimming in ages? Oh, it’s ‘cause I’m an idiot, isn’t it?_ She knew it wasn’t logical to be getting down on herself for something she couldn’t help – not when she hadn’t _known_ she’d be stranded in the middle of the ocean with a dying -- _don’t say that, Harley, stay optimistic_ – an extremely injured Ivy to get to. But it was hard not to blame herself at the moment.

She settled into a freestyle – or at least, what she remembered of it – with long strokes that smoothed out as she made her way towards Ivy. Every so often she paused to tread water and reorient herself in the blue expanse, always focusing on that dark patch of water. Ivy practically left a trail.

Harley knew when she hit the dark patch because it stung. It was a light sting, for her – like the buzz of low-power electricity – but she’d been exposed to Pam’s blood before, and she knew it was the “inoculations” Pam had given her at work that kept the water from doing too much damage. She suspected no sea creature would come poking around, not even a shark – what tickled Harley’s skin would burn any other. At least she didn’t need to worry about creatures of the deep.

She shifted into a breaststroke for the rest of the way to Ivy, cutting through the dark water with even strokes. If she hadn’t been too tired from swimming to do it, she would’ve gasped when she finally got close enough to get a good look at Ivy.

Ivy looked terrible. She was half on top of the flotation device, her arm twisted awkwardly in it so she couldn’t slip out. Her hair was a tangle of red covering her face, soaked on one side where it touched the water. Her back was a mess. Harley tried not to look at it. The blouse had been white this morning. It certainly wasn’t now.

But… Ivy was breathing. Shallowly, true, but _breathing_.

Harley swam up and carefully tested the far end of the flotation device with her weight. It stayed buoyant just fine.

She couldn’t _believe_ Ivy. Harley knew all about how strong metahumans could be – she’d fought them and plotted against them and _slept_ with one on a regular basis, after all – but she sometimes forgot that they were just fundamentally different than humans. Harley certainly wouldn’t be breathing after taking a bomb blast to the back, getting a round of ammo unloaded in her, and taking a thousand-foot drop (or more?) into the ocean.

But Ivy was alive. Yes, maybe dying a little, but for now, _alive._

 _Fucking hell_ , Harley thought, _if we get out of this alive, I’m buying you a farm and we’ll retire on the spot. You deserve it, Pam-a-lamb._

The Pam-a-lamb in question didn’t move. She just rocked in the cradle of the waves. Harley shifted so she could more securely grab Ivy if she needed to. There was nothing Harley could do at the moment but drift in the sun and hope the ocean was kind.

So together, they breathed. Just breathed, for a few minutes.

<><><>

Harley was not good at doing nothing. She supposed, after a while, that she actually _could_ do something, if she set her mind to it. The sun was dipping lower. Harley didn’t have a working phone or a compass or anything, but she _did_ have the sunset. She could swim towards that.

She didn’t try to move Pam – she was worried she would mess up and undo whatever tenuous connection Pam had made with the seat. Instead, Harley grabbed her edge of the seat and started swimming towards the sun. It set in the west; wherever they were in the Gulf of Mexico, land would be west.

She didn’t know where they were, and she knew the chances were slim that they’d make it. But Harley didn’t hesitate. She just swam, making progress inch by inch. Even when she grew exhausted, even when she felt like the waves were pummeling her backwards instead of towards her destination, she swam.

She swam until she couldn’t feel her legs and kept swimming.

She swam until her _vision_ was swimming, too, and kept swimming.

She swam until the sun was gone and she was moving by her internal sense of direction alone. And kept swimming.

She swam for Ivy.

Ivy, after all, had done far more than swim for her.

<><><>

Harley thought she was dreaming when her feet hit sand.

She hadn’t looked up in too long. Her mind had stopped working a few hours ago; all she could do was move her arms and legs doggedly through the water, trying to do something, anything, to make the world give her a break. So the sand surprised her, as did the beach it connected to.

She didn’t know how she found the strength – maybe it was the old gymnast in her, letting her push past her breaking point – but she lugged Ivy up onto the beach, flotation device and all. Harley tugged all the way up to where the sand met the undergrowth of a tropical forest, got Ivy under a tree, and promptly collapsed.

Her limbs barely moved when she asked them to. She had just enough energy to curl up around Ivy to offer warmth. Ivy’s skin was salty and cold. Too cold.

Harley couldn’t help it.

She fell asleep.


	4. Water You Doing

When Harley woke, it was to birds chirping, aching muscles, and salt dried on her skin. It felt crusted on her eyelids; she wiped it off as she blinked, trying to get her bearings.

She took stock of herself. Yes, she was tired, but not too terribly so. Her clothes were saltwater-soaked, but aside from being a little scratchy, they weren’t half bad to wear. The water damage to her hair was going to be terrible. She’d have to ask Ivy to—

Oh, _fuck._ Ivy.

Harley sat up ramrod straight, regretted it immediately, and looked to where she’d set Ivy down last night, in the shadow of a tree. Sunlight was dripping through the canopy above the two of them, now, and Harley would’ve expected to see Pam dappled with it, unconscious but alive.

Instead, she was looking at a shell of plants.

It seemed the tiny shoots and vines of the tropical forest they’d found themselves in had been busy in the night. Ivy was wrapped up in a cocoon of latticed stems and leaves, all wrapping around her protectively. Harley could barely see inside – but from what she _could_ make out, Ivy wasn’t doing much better than she had been when they were adrift.

Harley coughed, realizing that she was parched in the same moment she realized _Ivy_ must be, too. The plants could protect Ivy, but they couldn’t get her the water Harley knew she desperately needed. Only one person could do that.

 _Okay, water. That’s easy enough, isn’t it?_ Harley took a deep breath and got to her feet, ignoring her screaming muscles and protesting joints. She could feel the full effects of the swim, abso-tively posi-lutely. She stretched out like she had when she’d been doing gymnastics day in and day out; it helped. A little.

 _Water._ Harley looked down at Ivy. She didn’t want to leave her – of _course_ she didn’t want to leave her – but she had a feeling only water was going to save the day, not just kisses on cheeks and fervent hopes. Harley couldn’t heal Ivy, but she could help Ivy heal herself.

Harley took stock of the beach behind her. They were in a little bay. It should’ve been easy enough to identify, if Harley needed to get back to it; the sides curved in like claws. They must’ve been damn lucky to slip through the entrance to the cove the way they had last night – rocky crags loomed threateningly from both sides of the bay’s mouth.

Harley shivered, let herself look at Pam one last time, and set off down the beach. She chose left, because it seemed like nothing was going right, so she didn’t want to, either.

<><><>

She figured out pretty quickly that they were on an island. It was a very classic situation, in Harley’s opinion: two castaways end up on a deserted island, shenanigans ensue. Like _Gilligan’s Island_. It could’ve been fun, if Ivy wasn’t languishing between life and death just down the beach. Harley’s stomach pinched just thinking about it; that was _not_ what she wanted to be envisioning at the moment. Her job was to find water.

And, to her surprise, she did.

If this were a story, she thought, it would’ve taken her days to find the water, crashing through jungle underbrush and finally falling to her knees in despair. Then, as she lay there sobbing for the true love she was about to lose forever, a fantastical green-red island bird would appear and lead her to a water source.

But it wasn’t a story. Harley was keeping to the border of forest and beach, climbing a hill that seemed to go on forever, when she noticed a particularly thick patch of jungle plants to her left. If that wasn’t obvious enough, as she got closer, she could see a thin trickle of water making its way down the beach to meet the ocean.

 _Jackpot. I could beat out Robinson Crusoe for Castaway of the Millennia._ She couldn’t stop herself from smiling – she followed the trickle inland and found it stemmed from a shallow pond, clear and quiet, cradled between the roots of a few tropical trees.

She knelt by the pond and dipped out a sip with her hand. It was fresh water. Assuming her “shots” from Ivy would protect her from any nasty bacteria or toxins, Harley shoved her face into the pond, slaking her thirst with such enthusiasm that a frog sitting across from her gave an alarmed croak and hopped further away.

Harley looked up at it. “Fucking _yes_ ,” she announced to the frog, leaning back on her knees and setting her hands on her thighs. She felt like a new woman, water in her stomach and pride in her heart. She had done it. She was going to return a triumphant hero, carrying the water back to…

“Wait a fucking second.”

The frog looked at her, unperturbed by her profanity. It was a pretty green frog with red eyes, orange feet, and a blue ribcage striped with yellow. A full-on rainbow of an amphibian.

“Don’t look at me like that, Kermit.” Harley narrowed her eyes at the frog, trying to ignore her rising panic. “It’s not _my_ fault I don’t have anything to carry it with.”

How in the world was she going to get this back to Ivy? The only thing Harley had on her was the clothes on her back, and those weren’t going to be helpful when it came to bringing water. Well, she supposed, she _could_ soak all her clothes in the pond and wring them out over Ivy, but that didn’t seem very efficient…

Harley sat on her heels for a few moments. “Fuck,” she said again. The frog croaked back. “Yeah, I know,” she replied, “it’s a helluva conundrum, ain’t it?” She definitely couldn’t _carry_ Ivy all this way – strength aside, Ivy seemed pretty _rooted_ to her current location, pardon the pun.

Well, she wasn’t going to do any good just sitting here, so she got to her feet. _Hmm,_ she thought, _maybe I can find some washed-up plastic or something further down the beach._ She knew all about the Northern Pacific Gyre from one of Ivy’s long rants; trash often found its way to the ocean, and plastic bottles were one of the many items strewn across sandy beaches in the pictures Ivy had shown Harley, jabbing her finger down at the images.

“It’s a goddamn shame, that’s what it is,” Ivy had said, the rage that so often simmered under her voice coming out full force.

“Let me guess,” Harley had said, “we’re going to go kill a polluter.”

Ivy had given her a viciously righteous smile, one that cut across her face like a shining knife, and replied, “more than one.”

Harley smiled at the memory as she neared the top of the hill. Sure, she could plan her own heists just like any other self-respecting supervillain, but she love love _loved_ tagging along on Ivy’s. Ivy always got a gleam in her eye when she was meting out environmental justice that Harley found adorable to the extreme.

It wasn’t like the crazed look in the Joker’s eye when he was offing whatever unfortunate chum happened to be caught in the crosshairs of his next joke. Ivy’s targets were always picked specifically for their crimes against humanity, which left Harley feeling vindicated by association as well as filled up her quota for good deeds of the year.

And yeah, she’d admit it was a little ironic to be trying to do good deeds as a villain, but there was a difference between “rob a children’s hospital” and “reveal the environmental misdeeds of a multibillion dollar corporation and make off with all their Bitcoin in the process.” One made you money. The other made you money _and_ made you feel like less of an asshole in the process. Ivy always went for the latter, and Harley was happy to go along for the ride.

Harley was still thinking about the narrow escape they’d made from the penthouse of one of the biggest polluters in the bottled-water industry when she reached the top of the hill.

It took her about three seconds to process what she was seeing. In that time, she dropped to her stomach and pressed her chest against the ground. She stayed there for a moment, waiting for a shout of alarm. Nothing happened. The sand of the beach itching against her cheek, she forced herself to be patient for a few more moments before she let herself snake up to the crest of the hill a little more. She peeked over.

Down below her, in a little cove not unlike the one she’d landed in with Ivy, was the decimated husk of a plane.

And no, it couldn’t be just _any_ plane. It was definitely the Wayne plane. ( _Haha,_ Harley thought dully, _that rhymes._ ) One wing had dug into the beach with such force that it had created a veritable dune of sand. The _Wayne plane_ , Jesus Henry Christ.

She and Ivy were certainly on an island, but it looked like it wasn’t deserted, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for more conflict... mwahaha.


	5. The Crimes of Mr. Asshole

As Harley peered down, she saw that the rich people that had populated the plane, adorned in such finery just yesterday, were stripped down to boxers and bras. They were all sitting in a neat line down one side of the plane like ducks at the carnival booth, waiting to be hit by a well-thrown baseball. From what she could see, there weren’t as many of them as had begun the voyage – she wasn’t surprised – but there were still more than she would’ve expected. She knew the plane was supposed to have remarkable safety measures, but she was inordinately impressed, regardless.

The people seemed to be bound at the ankles and wrists with strips of cloth. Harley raised an eyebrow. That could only mean…

The gunman came around the side of the plane as if on cue. Entirely characteristically, he was packing firepower, brandishing a gun with one hand. Harley noticed, with a deep and undying hatred, that it was one of _hers._ _I fuckin’ hate it when people look in my luggage, Mr. Asshole_ , she thought, glaring at him. _And I hate it even more when those people are the same ones who shot my girlfriend._

She almost wished she could head down into the cove right now and go after him, but she wasn’t in any shape to do so – especially not when he had her gun. She thought she recognized it even from here, and it was one she’d modified herself. She didn’t want to get shot by that thing; it would get nasty. And, she reminded to herself, her priority was to get water to Ivy, not go for a sweet taste of revenge.

The gunman barked an order, and the rich people struggled to their feet. From what she could see, it looked like they’d been _hobbled_ around the ankles, not quite tied; they struggled as they filed into the ruined plane through the door in the side. The same hole Harley had been sucked out of was now blocked off by the twisted metal of the plane’s wing; it looked like the door was the only way in.

The gunman closed the door and blocked it with a metal strut somehow detached from the plane. He strode off towards the woods. Harley waited patiently.

It was worth it; when he returned, a few minutes later, she saw he was toting two or three water bottles. He cracked open the door to the plane and tossed them in, then shut it again and went around to the other side, where Harley couldn’t see him.

Harley compiled a list of facts. She was very good at that; it was a holdover from her psychiatry days, when that had been her method for diagnosing patients. Mental lists of the symptoms they showed that she later matched with the DSM-5 (which, she had thought even then, was majorly shitty but better than nothing.)

Fact One: Mr. Asshole (that was his name now. Harley had decided and her decision was final) had found a water source.

Fact Two: Mr. Asshole had water bottles.

Fact Three: Harley needed both. True, she had already found the first one, but if she could get a couple of water bottles already full, that would be the dream.

Oh, and Fact Four: Mr. Asshole hadn’t been gone long. Which meant _his_ water source was close to the plane.

Keeping an eye on the plane, Harley slipped into the jungle and made her way down into the valley formed around the cove. She kept to the trees, moving quietly and slowly. She tried to stay out of sight of the windows of the plane _and_ wherever Mr. Asshole might be, though she checked her progress every so often, creeping to the edge of the tropical forest to peek out.

When she was almost even with the plane, she found a trail tramped down into the forest. It was hard to pick out, but Harley had spent much of her time in the lairs of a certain redhead who preferred forested areas, so she knew a path when she saw it. Paying careful attention to her environment – it wouldn’t do to be caught unawares by the gunman – Harley made her way down the path.

She heard the stream before she saw it, and then she came out into a small clearing. A few filled water bottles were propped up in the roots of a tree, next to a clear little brook babbling downhill.

Harley didn’t hesitate. She took one water bottle – just one, because more might be missed, and she and Ivy might later need the element of surprise – and footed it back towards her own little beach as fast as she could. Unlike the way here, she tore through the underbrush as quietly as she could. She had the water; she needed to deliver it.

Ivy was waiting.

<><><>

When Harley got back, she almost couldn’t find Ivy again.

The cocoon had thickened. Harley could only imagine it was doing so in response to Ivy’s suffering. Now, instead of being able to peek through and see Ivy inside, Harley could barely tell she was there. The shell of plants was so thick and tightly interwoven that Harley worried Ivy might not be able to breathe inside. By now, it was an oblong pod that looked insurmountably tough.

Harley tapped a fingernail on the top of the shell experimentally. In response, the vines tightened.

She _had_ the water, in a smooth silver container that looked exactly like a rich person’s idea of what a water bottle should be. She _had_ it, and she had to get it to Pam, and here the plants were, trying to protect Ivy and doing the opposite. Harley knew – just knew – that if she couldn’t get the water inside, Ivy was going to die.

That could not stand.

Harley sighed. She sat down next to the cocoon. “Hey, Ives,” she said, setting the water bottle down and placing a hand on the plants. They shifted at her touch. She couldn’t tell if they were tightening even more.

She had a knife tucked into the sole of her shoe, but she doubted that would do much. If anything, she thought, the cocoon would probably get thicker if she tried to stab it.

“Hey, Ives,” she repeated. “It’s me. I’m out here waiting for you to open up.” She giggled. “Funny to think about, since it took you so long to do that with me.”

She waited. The plants didn’t slacken, but at least they were no longer shifting to her touch.

 _Welp_ , she thought, _might as well keep trying_.

“You know you mean a lot to me, Ives. Like, a _lot_ a lot. You’re… holy hell, you’re magnificent. You’re still alive in there! ‘Cause if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be doing this… this _thing_ you’re doing with the plants. And you being alive is pretty damn amazing! I don’t know many people who _would_ be alive by now, what with… you know… getting shot and falling out a plane and protecting me from a bomb and all that.”

She was really picking up steam now.

“And more than just the bomb! I coulda been sucked up in an engine or somethin’. Ya know? And I coulda hit that water and splatted, because I’m only human. And… _god_ , Ives, I know you’re not the nicest person in the world, but you gave me the only parachute. The _only_ parachute. I know you didn’t know you’d make it. I still don’t know if you’re going to make it.”

Was she misting up? She wasn’t sure. This all made her feel so sappy and strange, and she didn’t even know if Ivy could hear. The cocoon was thick, after all; maybe her voice wasn’t penetrating the layers and layers of plants, much less Ivy’s ears. Ivy was probably still unconscious, after all.

Still, if Harley could access the _sub_ conscious, maybe that would be enough. If Ivy could _make_ this cocoon, hopefully she could break it open again.

“You’ve saved me so, _so_ many times,” Harley said, and this time she was thinking about Mistah Jay and how many times she’d staggered to Ivy’s door in tears, covered in bruises and cuts and self-loathing. How many times Ivy had welcomed her, even when she’d warned Harley, even when Harley knew she was being cruel to offer to Ivy what Ivy could never have.

“Ives, please. Let me save you.”

The plants shifted. Just a little. And this time, Harley thought they were loosening.

“Let me save you,” she repeated, pressing her cheek against the cocoon. “’Cause… well, it’s cause I fuckin’ love you, Red, okay? I’m in love with you. Capeesh?”

The response was very quiet, and not vocalized whatsoever. But Harley knew – she _knew_ – Ivy had heard. The vines slithered back, the leaves shrank away, and Ivy was lying in a bower of vines, her cheeks sunken and her face slack.

 _She trusts me,_ Harley thought, unscrewing the top of the water bottle. She moved closer to Ivy – carefully, so she wouldn’t upset the careful balance she’d created with the plants – and lifted Ivy’s head onto her lap. She tipped the water bottle and dribbled it into Ivy’s mouth. Even when some water trickled down Ivy’s face, it seemed to sink into her skin – almost like magic. When Harley tipped the last of the water out of the bottle, Ivy’s eyes were still closed, her breathing still shallow. But her cheeks looked just a little plumper, her lips just slightly less cracked.

 _She trusts me,_ Harley thought, _she trusts me._

Ivy needed water. So Harley went to get more, one thought still dominating her mind. It felt like it meant everything.

_She trusts me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More to come soon :)


	6. Toughen Up, Buttercup

When Ivy woke up, everything hurt so much she _knew_ she couldn’t be dead.

It just didn’t work that way. When one was dead, fully and completely dead, one’s back didn’t throb. One didn’t feel like one had been pummeled by a thousand boxers for a few hours straight. One didn’t feel like they’d been shot.

Oh, she’d been shot before – once by the Joker, when she’d been dressed up as Harley (it was a long story), once by one of Two-Face’s goons who’d decided he didn’t want to live to see the next sunrise. But those had been one-bullet affairs, and Poison Ivy’s metahumanity came with an excellent advantage in the healing category. It had taken a week or so to recover fully from each of those instances, but she hadn’t needed more than a night’s rest to feel up to resuming her daily activities.

Still, she’d never been, quite literally, _gunned down._ She’d never slammed into the sea so hard she’d lost consciousness. She knew water was like concrete from that high up; she’d never have tested whether or not she could survive it without the unfortunate impetus of being tossed out of a plane.

So it was no wonder she hurt. It _was_ quite a wonder that she was alive. It gave her ego a bit of inflation – not that her ego needed it.

The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was Harley, looking down at her. She had an intensely focused look on her face. She was holding a water bottle, poised to tip some of the liquid into Ivy’s mouth.

“Harls,” Ivy rasped. _God_ , she felt desiccated. Like she’d been soaked in a bath of salt. Which… well, she supposed she _had_ been. They were on an island – she could feel the plants of it stretching out in all directions, which meant she knew where those same plants stopped growing when they hit beach – but Ivy hadn’t seen an island when she’d been falling. Not that she was _concentrating_ on that, but it certainly must’ve taken the two of them a bit of time to get here. Hence, time for Ivy to get in a solid saltwater soak. She wrinkled her nose at the thought.

“Ivy! Welcome back to the world of the living.” Harley’s blue eyes were sparkling; from the look of it, there might not have been an expectation of Ivy returning to the “world of the living” at _all_.

“Thank you. Kiss me?” It was not really a request. Ivy just needed it. Needed a reminder that some things in life were worth gritting her teeth through this agony for.

Harley obliged, though her lips were soft on Ivy’s. Like she knew not to put too much pressure on Ivy at the moment. She tasted like salt.

Harley drew back. “More water, Pam-a-lamb?”

Ivy closed her eyes. “Please.”

<><><>

Ivy drifted a bit in between Harley’s water runs. She gathered from the time it took Harley to return with a filled bottle that the water wasn’t nearby, but also wasn’t too far away; she also discovered that they only had one thirty-two-ounce container. Additionally, she learned that Harley had already gone through twenty-six runs to the freshwater source before Ivy had woken up.

“That’s a lot,” Ivy commented.

“Yup. _Plus_ I dragged ya out in the sun for yer photosynthesis. I was worried about moving ya, but it seems like it worked out?”

There was a touch of anxiety to the question, so Ivy tried to alleviate it. “No, no, it was a good choice, Harley. I need it.” It was the truth, too – the sun was setting, but Ivy was still soaking up energy from its rays. She wasn’t even hungry, which Harley _definitely_ was, because near the thirty-first water run Ivy heard Harley’s stomach grumbling.

“Have you eaten?”

Harley shook her head. “Nah. I’m ok, though. Hey, think you’re ready for a shock?”

“So long as it’s not the Arkham kind,” Ivy deadpanned. “Hit me with it.”

Harley nodded. “You know the Wayne plane?”

Ivy’s gaze darkened. “Worthless piece of junk. Couldn’t even hold together against a tiny little bomb.”

“Yeah, well, it crashed here.”

Ivy raised an eyebrow. Her plants hadn’t told her anything of the sort. “What?”

“Uh huh. I stole the water bottle from them.”

Ivy cracked a smile. “Good for you. Serves the rich bastards right.”

Harley tipped back in the sand so she was lying next to Ivy. She sighed. “You’re not gonna like this, Red,” she said knowingly.

Ivy waited. She wasn’t going to encourage Harley to speak sooner than was necessary. It was already enough to deal with her entire body throbbing in time with her heartbeat. She wouldn’t force bad news to come any earlier.

“We might have to go _save_ the rich bastards.”

Ivy let her head loll to the left. “You’re kidding me. Right?”

“Nuh uh. Mr. Asshole – sorry, the guy who shot you—” (“no,” Pam interrupted, “you can call him Mr. Asshole, I approve.”) “he’s got them all tied up.”

Ivy laughed, harsh and unyielding. With the amount of pain she was enduring right now for having dared make a stand on that plane, entirely out of her element – when none of _them_ would – the industry billionaires and coddled heiresses could screw themselves. “Not our problem, daisy.”

“Yes our problem.” Harley held up a hand to forestall Pam’s response, forging onward. “It’s annoying as hell, I know, but I think I can rig up a signal from the pilot’s cabin to get the Batplane here. To the island. The only problem is Mr. Asshole’s keepin’ his hostages in the plane, so we gotta go through him if I want to do my thing.”

Ivy frowned. “You know how to call the Batplane?”

Harley didn’t look at her. “I kinda sorta know the channels Batman picks up chatter from,” she admitted. “I think I can piggyback on a radio signal if I can get in the cockpit. Not to freak you out, babe, but fuck, you and me need to get our heinies off this rock.” She gave Ivy a side-eyed glance. “Please don’t try to tell me you couldn’t use some of your chemical patcher-uppers right now, Red.”

Ivy closed her eyes. It was as close as she was going to get to an acknowledgement that Harley was right. Mostly because Harley being right made Ivy feel… weak. She hated not being in control, and that was exactly where she was sitting at the moment. “I’m guessing you need me. Or my pheromones. Or something.”

Harley leaned her head and pressed a kiss to Ivy’s cheek. It was slightly sandy. “If you’re in the shape for it, yeah.”

Ivy bristled. “Of _course_ I’m in the shape for it.”

“Babe,” Harley said gently, “can you stand up right now?”

Ivy tried. She really did. She thought through the motions she wanted to complete: flipping over, bracing her hands in the sand, lifting herself to her feet, balancing once she was there. Her body didn’t move.

“You’re trying right now, ain’tcha, Red?”

“No,” Ivy said sullenly, “I could do it if I had to.”

“Course ya could,” Harley said, voice entirely smooth. There existed a silent agreement between them that Ivy would remain lying down and they would pretend it was because she didn’t want to get up, not that she couldn’t. “ _If it’s just between us, Ives,”_ Harley whispered, _“I betcha yer insides are still all smushed up. Give yourself a break and let ‘em start knitting together again.”_

Ivy frowned. At the very least, she seemed to have full control over her face. “So. What do we do now?”

“Welp. Tomorrow you heal and I reconnoiter. Whatever happens, we need to get on that plane. But tonight,” Ivy could see, out of the corner of her eye, a familiar grin stretch across Harley’s face. “Well, tonight I figured we could make a plan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, Ivy. Gotta love that pride :)


	7. Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang

Ivy would, until her dying day, swear that kisses had no more efficacy in the realm of medical technology than the pseudoscientific B.S. of “healing rocks.” Not in one scientific paper in her many, many years of schooling (one didn’t receive one’s doctorate in a day) had concluded, or even entertained the notion, that kisses could do more than provide a minor placebo effect for crying children with scraped knees.

Still. Harley didn’t ascribe to the same beliefs, and just as she spent the next day carrying bottle after bottle of water to Ivy as Ivy lay in the warmth of the sun, she also distributed kisses like largesse, scattering them across Ivy’s skin. Tender, sweet kisses tucked along Ivy’s collarbone or on her stomach, where the ugly wraiths of her bullet wounds were slowly fading.

And where Harley’s lips touched, Ivy liked to believe that warmth radiated outward, a spread of love that might just make her tissues repair more quickly, her organs mending with renewed vigor.

She _liked_ to believe it. She didn’t _actually_ believe it. There was a difference.

By midday, Ivy could sit up – albeit with such immense pain that it felt like someone had stuck her in one of the car compacters found in scrapyards and dispassionately flicked the switch. By night, she could stand, though she almost keeled over when she tried it. Harley wasn’t there – she was off to, in her words, “spy and shit” – so Ivy couldn’t be scolded for pushing herself so hard her vision went black at the edges.

Her body could handle a lot of punishment. But she’d put it through a particularly cruel and unusual experience; she couldn’t expect to be frolicking about in the pink of health so soon after it all went down. Well, she could _expect_ it, but she knew logically that her expectations for herself were often far higher than they would be for anyone else. It was that thought that let her settle back down into the sand.

She realized as she did, the fire in her abdomen dimming as she stretched out and relaxed, that Harley hadn’t eaten for at least two days. And she’d been scampering up and down the beach, not an ounce of exhaustion showing on her face.

Time to pay her back.

Closing her eyes, Ivy let the tension drain out of her muscles. She dipped into the pool of the Green at her core, the features on her face smoothing as she reached out into the forest. She searched with her location as the center of a bullseye, and there – only a few hundred yards into the forest – she found it. A durian tree.

With a gently push, she helped it to produce more fruit. She couldn’t _see_ it, but she could feel the count of durians on its branches increasing, each new one growing unnaturally quickly. She called for them until there were more than enough to feed Harley when she returned.

Even that small act left Ivy feeling drained. That was the true evidence that she was not healing as quickly as she would’ve hoped. Even if she had her vines, she wasn’t sure she could beckon them to grow to their usual length and thickness, nor trust herself to execute their movements like they were extensions of herself.

She was not as powerful at the moment as she would like to be. The thought left a frown on her face and a sour taste in her mouth.

She had just repositioned herself to be more comfortably cradled by the sand when Harley returned, toting another bottle of water. And – more importantly, this time – news.

“Okay, so here’s the dealio,” Harley said, plopping down next to Pam. She straightened her pigtails as she talked, ensuring that the elastics that held them in place were still tight. (Ivy was enormously impressed that the hair ties still worked at _all,_ given their extended dip in the ocean – she would’ve thought they would have snapped by now _.)_ “Mr. Asshole is more sinister than we initially gave him credit for.”

Harley grinned, which meant worse news was coming. She only grinned like _that_ when a challenge was going to be far more difficult than it appeared at first glance. It was the grin she’d had on her face when she’d come out of her first interview with the Joker, which meant Ivy disliked it immensely.

“In fact,” Harley continued, “it appears that Mr. Asshole is no mere rando robber after all. Based on my incredibly astute assessment of the psychological nature of Mr. Asshole’s engagements with his captives, he is, in fact, _looking for someone._ ”

She waited for Ivy to be impressed. Ivy gave a dutiful clap.

“Oh! You clapped! I’m so proud of ya, Red.” Harley leaned over and gave her a peck on the cheek. “You’ll be all the way better in no time.”

“Tell me about Mr. Asshole,” Ivy said flatly. She would rather not be reminded of her condition if she could help it. Besides, Ivy tended to like it when Harley let her get a glimpse at the remarkable intelligence she so often kept hidden from the world. It was easier to get away with well-thought-out crimes when her opponents thought of her as Harley Quinn, blonde bimbo and Joker’s ex-girlfriend – not Harley Quinn, PhD in psychology and ass-kicking. Harley had slowly been shifting more consistently into the guise of the latter, and Ivy loved when she showed it.

The fact that Harley was able to surmise the dynamics of a hostage situation from afar – too far, Ivy figured, to be able to hear what the involved parties were saying? She didn’t know that _she_ could do it, which made Harley’s ability in that regard all the more remarkable

“Well,” Harley said, “that’s about it. I don’t know if he has a plan to get offa’ the island. I think he’s pretty,” she tapped her forehead with her index finger, “ _single-minded_ , if ya know what I mean. Either stubborn enough to keep up with what he was hired to do after the plane fuckin’ _crashed_ , or he’s getting paid so much it’s worth it to him to keep it going.”

“Any clue who he’s looking for?”

“None whatsoever. Betcha it’s a competitor of one of those whiny, old money babies. Anyway, I don’t think they’ve given up the person yet, ‘cause I think Mr. Asshole would put my firepower to good work if they did.

“ _Your firepower?_ ”

“Oh, yeah,” Harley said sourly, “didja know he found my guns?”

Now, _that_ was cause for alarm. Ivy had seen what Harley’s modified weapons could do. It was not pretty. Not pretty at all.

“That certainly complicates things.”

“Uh huh,” Harley said. “Oh, and I think we better act fast, Red, ‘cause I don’t know how long he’s gonna keep ‘em alive before he gets tired of it and kills ‘em all off. I betcha the food on that snack cart is long gone.”

Ivy snorted. “Doesn’t matter to us if they’re alive, does it?”

Harley just shrugged. “Bats is best buds with Bruce Wayne. Everyone knows that. I’m not sure he’d give us a hand off this godforsaken hunk of rock if he found us at the middle of a massacre.” Her brow furrowed. “Hell, maybe he’d establish Arkham 2.0 right on the spot. It’s not like it’d be just as easy to escape. We don’t even know where we _are._ ”

Ivy wished she had the energy to pinch the bridge of her nose but settled for a long-suffering sigh. “ _Fine_. We save the rich people. Maybe they’ll give us the Key to the City when Batman dumps us back in Gotham. Before we’re thrown in Arkham, of course.”

“Aw, Red, don’t be such a pessimist.” Harley’s stomach grumbled. “Shut up, you,” she told it sternly.

“Speaking of which,” Ivy said, “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

<><><>

Harley returned half an hour later gorged on durians, with plenty more tucked into her shirt. She’d folded it over to create a makeshift basket at her front. “Oh heavenly lord,” she announced, “those taste _horrid_. It was absolutely wonderful. Thanks a million, Ives.”

Ivy laughed. “I’ll take one. I think I could use it right about now.”

As Harley had so declared, the durian was horrid – though Ivy could imagine that if one ate durians more often, one might develop a taste for them. Still, it was nourishment. And although the sunlight had provided much of that to Ivy during the day, it was nice to have something in her stomach. Now that her stomach didn’t feel as flattened as a pancake, as it had just that morning.

“So,” Ivy said, finishing up her durian, “when are you thinking we’ll attack?”

“Oh, that one’s easy, Red,” Harley said, scooching closer so they could share warmth. (The beach didn’t drop to freezing at night, but they’d learned the previous evening that a chilling breeze sometimes drifted past.) “We’re gonna need to attack at dawn.”


	8. Sunrise Showdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A rescue mission with a twist.

Harley Quinn hummed a tune under her breath as she circled the downed plane, every so often giving the song its words. _“Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip,”_ she sang softly, unable to keep a grin from spreading across her face.

She always got like this just before a fight. Slightly giddy, her nerves buzzing. It was kinda like kissing Mistah Jay had been, before it all went down; her adrenaline pumped and her mind shifted into full gear.

She had been addicted to the Joker. Maybe she was addicted to fighting, too.

She didn’t have any of her normal weapons, but she’d fashioned a makeshift bat out of a piece of wood Ivy had called forth. It was gnarled and thick and heavy in Harley’s hands, the very weight of it comforting. Harley had it propped over her shoulder as she maneuvered through the forest, keeping out of sight of the windows of the plane. Mr. Asshole hadn’t yet exposed himself, but she knew he was going to, and she wanted to be on the side opposite the entrance when he did.

The sun hadn’t yet risen. Harley and Ivy had awoken in the near-dark, wrapped around each other, and gotten to work. Ivy was walking around now, though she couldn’t pretend to be perfectly healthy; Harley had eyes, after all. But though she could see Ivy’s limp and the contortions of her face when she twisted her torso wrong, Harley bit her lip and said nothing.

That was one of the consequences of Ivy’s pride: she just couldn’t handle people caring about her so goddamn much. So Harley played into it and pretended she didn’t notice the weakness that was clearly there.

Even if they didn’t acknowledge it out loud to each other, Ivy’s current state had certainly informed their plan of attack. There was no way Ivy was going to be going in guns blazing, so to speak: they needed trickiness if they were to win.

Harley finished up her miniature parody with a slightly off-key _“here on Harlequin’s Isle!”_ and settled down into a squat at the edge of the trees, motionless. She would know her cue when she saw it.

So for now, she lay in wait.

<><><>

Mr. Asshole’s real name was Kendrick Burrington, though Mr. Asshole both suited him better and was far easier to pronounce. (The “g” in Burrington was silent.) When he woke up on the morning he would die, he could have had a dream in which he murdered several helpless puppies, he was so happy. (Though that is not _exactly_ what he dreamt, it somewhat exemplified the kind of man he was that should he have such a dream, he would enjoy it.)

The reason he was happy was simple: his employer had stated that, if Mr. Asshole had not identified the Wayne investors by noon on the third day on this godforsaken island, he could kill them all and assume he was offing the right ones along with the rest. Obviously, that was not the best option for his employer, as it could cause unforeseen complications to purposefully murder more people than was necessary, but for Mr. Asshole it made the entire affair far simpler. Once the investor situation was resolved, he could go about sending for help with the fancy tangle of wires in the cockpit.

And today was the third day. _Joy to the world_ , thought Mr. Asshole, _finally._

The captives sat down the center aisle of the plane, quivering with fear as they looked up at Mr. Asshole. He had enjoyed that they were, by nature, a captive audience. Mr. Asshole had spent his first night sleeping peacefully out on the beach with their coats and mink for coverings and pillows; they had been barred inside the plane, which sweltered in the day and froze in the night.

“Good morning, everyone,” Mr. Asshole said pleasantly. “Enjoying your vacation?”

Nobody responded. One woman who’d mouthed off to Mr. Asshole after the initial crash had gotten a kick to the ribs for her trouble; the rest of them had kept their mouths shut after that. Even when he didn’t want them to.

“So,” said Mr. Asshole, as a matter of course, “has anyone changed their minds? Would you like to tell me who the Wayne investors are?”

Again, nobody spoke. Mr. Asshole cursed fervently. “You know,” he said, changing tact like he had a dozen times since they’d been on the island, “you should be frightened of what I’ll do to you to find out.” He raised the late Harley Quinn’s gun and twirled it on his index finger. “I’ve never shot this thing and I doubt any of you would want me to try it out.”

One of the men piped up. “We don’t know what investors you’re talking about,” he said, his voice quavering only slightly.

“Not like I’ve been telling you.” Mr. Asshole rolled his eyes. “The Wayne investors. The ones who invested in the Wayne plane.” He gestured at their surroundings. _“This_ plane, idiot. Jesus, I should just shoot you and be done with it.” He raised the gun and put the main in its crosshairs just to watch him squirm.

“You all need to remember,” Mr. Asshole said, lowering his gun, “it’s not your _place_ to mess with me.” He puffed out his chest. “ _I_ killed _Poison fucking Ivy_.” He laughed. “AND Harley Quinn. I’m a badass. Don’t you ever forget it. I’m gonna go take a piss.”

He liked announcing the first part because it made him feel good about himself. Two-bit goon, his ass; Poison Ivy shouldn’t have antagonized him. He would’ve killed her anyway, but this way he felt better about it. And he announced the second part because he, personally, liked to remind them that for all their money, these people had to ask him permission to pee.

And then he got to decide whether or not to give it.

He emerged from the plane and shoved the door shut behind them. Whether or not they were all tied up, he wasn’t a _total_ idiot. He had to make sure they’d stay there.

<><><>

As soon as the door closed behind their captor, Rowan Rue was talking.

“Jesus, people,” he said, “we just need to figure out who the investor is.”

“You’re not going to convince anyone, Mr. Rue,” a woman old enough to be his mother intoned. She sounded tired to the bone. “None of us are looking forward to dying.”

“Thing is,” Rue pushed, “if we _know_ , then we know who to protect. Besides, maybe he wants to know so he can kill the _rest_ of us. Did you consider that? What if the investor is the only one who’s safe?” His voice was a mixture of frustration and panic. “I don’t know about all of you, but _I_ want to go home alive. I’m not squealing. But before we make a move, we need all the information. Collectively.”

Another man laughed. “ _Collectively?_ Mr. Rue, I know data mining is your business, but I don’t see how determining the identity of this mysterious investor will aid us. There are hardly enough of us here to take that hoodlum in a fight, even if we _are_ fully aware of our positionality with regard to the financing of this plane.”

The people on the plane were well used to the way of things. By now, it was a routine: they were interrogated by the robber when he was in the plane and the arrogant Rowan Rue when he was out of it.

Rowan Rue kept asking, but his pleas fell on deaf ears.

<><><>

Mr. Asshole unzipped his fly at the base of a tree. Someone watched him through the underbrush, green eyes bright and focused. As still as a viper about to strike.

Movement to his left caught his eye. He ignored it. Probably some jungle monkey or a leaf waving in the breeze. Something not worth his notice.

The movement didn’t go away. Annoyed, he zipped up and looked.

It was a vine. Moving slowly and rhythmically. Hypnotically.

“Wha—” said Mr. Asshole, and it was most certainly the fault of his IQ that he found the vine a more dangerous prospect than the distraction it was creating.

He was looking to his left. Poison Ivy came from his right, her hand snaking around the back of his neck as she went on tiptoe to press a kiss to his lips.

It would’ve been enough, too, if she’d been at her full power. Her pheromones, already scenting the air, would’ve cloyed thick in his lungs, lulling him the extra amount she needed. Enough to destroy any preemptive resistance against her. But she wasn’t as strong as she was used to being, and that miscalculation was crucial.

Because instead of letting her kiss him, Mr. Asshole spun on his heel in response to her presence and slammed his fist into her side.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ivy huffed out, slamming into the sandy ground. “ _Fuck_ ,” she said again, her hand going to her abdomen; she wasn’t sure if she was bleeding, but by the look in his eyes and the gun he was leveling down at her, she wouldn’t have time to find out. “HARLEY!” she yelled, her voice shrill, and then she enacted Plan B.

She threw a handful of sand into Mr. Asshole’s face and ran.

Or, rather, limped quickly. The problem with her current state ( _current weakness_ , her mind whispered) was that she could barely carry herself, much less get away from him like she needed to. At most, she could call on the underbrush to shrink away from her but grow up in a tangled mesh in his path.

But by now, there should’ve been another factor at play.

“YOO HOO! MR. ASSHOLE!”

Ivy grinned. She glanced back; Mr. Asshole wheeled around, distracted. And there was Harley, running flat-out for the plane. She paused at the entrance, then yelled, “HEY, BUDDY, I THINK I FOUND SOMETHING YOU CAN SWITCH OUT FOR YOUR BRAIN! IT’S A ROCK! ONLY 399 BUCKS FOR THE UPGRADE!”

And then, as he gave a shout and ran for her, nearly tripping over his own feet, Ivy sank back into the underbrush, hidden. He wouldn’t find her again.

It didn’t matter if he barred the door once Harley was in the plane. She could call the Batplane, and all they would have to do would be to wait out the Bat’s arrival. Furthermore, Ivy thought with a self-satisfied smile, it looked like Mr. Asshole had skipped his cardio. He didn’t even get close to reaching Harley before she slipped inside the plane and shut the entrance behind her.

<><><>

Harley locked the door and whooped in victory, shooting an appraising look down the aisle of the plane. “Freaking hell, we did it!” Harley said, pumping a fist in the air. She did a little dance in front of the rich people, a shimmy of her hips and her hands, because she was in the plane and Mr. Asshole was outside of it and that was cause for celebration. No threats in here – just whiny hostages.

They sat, wide-eyed and staring, and looked back at her.

Harley rolled her eyes. “I know this ain’t the most conventional rescue in history, folks,” she said, “but me ‘n my girl are getting us all outta here, so I’d at least appreciate a thank-you.”

Nobody spoke. Harley shrugged and turned towards the cockpit. “Suit yourselves, fuckos.”

There was a sound behind her. She ignored it. This proved crucial.

“Thank you, Ms. Quinn,” someone said smoothly, “but I’d appreciate it if you’d not move another step. Unless you would enjoy a bullet in your back. Drop the bat, and hands up, if you please.”

Good Lord. Harley could not _believe_ this. Lifting her hands in the air and letting her weapon clatter to the floor, she turned slowly, a frown already settled on her face.

She stared down the barrel of a gun.

She supposed at least one of the whiny hostages was going to be a threat, after all.


	9. Hostage Situation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tada, new chapter time :)

“Okay, so,” Harley said, looking straight at Rowan Rue, “I know I may have to explain this slowly, but _Ivy and I are not the bad guys._ Well. Not this time, at least.” She quirked a finger at the door, where they could all hear Mr. Asshole slamming his fists impotently into the door. “We want to be rid of _him_ just as much as you do.”

“Oh,” Rowan Rue said, slicking back his hair with the hand not holding his gun, “I think that’s where I understand you perfectly, Ms. Quinzel, while you, sadly, lack an understanding of me. Have you wondered why that man hasn’t just shot the door in yet? Hmm?”

Harley narrowed her eyes. “Nah, I haven’t. Too busy being fuckin’ _held at gunpoint._ ”

Rue laughed. “You don’t want to be rid of him as much as I do. Because I don’t want to be rid of him at all.” He gestured with the gun casually towards the door, loose strips of clothing still hanging off his wrists, and suddenly she understood that he, unlike the others, hadn’t been tied up. Not truly. And she understood why.

“I can practically see the gears turning in your little head,” Rue said with a smirk. “Now, Harleen, why don’t you be a dear welcome our guest into this humble abode?”

<><><>

Something was wrong.

Something was _really_ wrong.

That was obvious to Ivy. Because the entrance to the plane was opening, and Mr. Asshole was _going inside._

With the weapon.

Ivy was known as a genius for a reason. There was only one way Mr. Asshole was getting on that plane. He had an inside man. And that man must be armed; Harley would’ve brained anyone who tried to let Mr. Asshole on board otherwise.

 _Shit_. Why did everything have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t she just get a nice vacation to a quaint little Costa Rican town with a volcano presiding over red tile roofs and dirt roads? Why couldn’t she be tangled up in sheets with Harley, not in some dumb rich person’s hired-gun scheme?

And then the true gravity of the situation hit her.

This wasn’t like when she had worked alone. This was more. This was _Harley._ They had _Harley_.

Specifically, the man who had shot Ivy with a full round of bullets had Harley.

Ivy’s panic began to grow. And, with it, her rage.

It didn’t matter how broken her body felt. If they thought they were going to keep Harley from her, they were dead wrong.

And, soon, she considered, they’d just be dead.

<><><>

“So, uhhh.” Harley let Mr. Asshole secure her wrists. (He used more than one strip of cloth, which made her feel inordinately proud.) She didn’t like being tied up, but while she played a fool, she wasn’t one; she wasn’t about to try some stupid half-assed escape when there were two separate guns to her head. “What’s the deal about why this is happening?”

Rue gave a harsh, barking laugh. “Oh, this is just _precious_ ,” he said. “You’re bringing tears to my eyes, Quinn. First you have the _nerve_ to get in the way of my _perfect_ plan, and now we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere and you have the _gall_ to still be alive. Which, by the way, is not a state you’ll be familiar with for much longer. Kendrick here will make sure of that, once we’ve lured out Ms. Isley and dispensed with her.”

“Okaaaay,” Harley said, buying time, “one, I don’t know who Kendrick is, and two, I’m here alone.” It wasn’t the most helpful lie – if Rue believed that Ivy wasn’t around, keeping Harley alive as bait wouldn’t be necessary – but she wasn’t sure if Ivy was in a state to take these people. Actually, she was _sure_ that Ivy wasn’t. And she’d rather die than watch it happen to Ivy. She’d already made that choice.

“Please. Are you an imbecile? This is Kendrick.” Rue pointed. (“ _Mr. Asshole is better_ ,” Harley muttered under her breath, which earned her a sharp slap from the asshole in question.) “And do you think _I’m_ an imbecile? You said ‘we.’ You said ‘Ivy and I.’”

“I saw her,” Mr. Asshole contributed. “Outside. Tried to kiss me.”

“In your dreams,” Harley mocked.

“Shut up, Quinn.” Rue’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know what it’ll take to kill that bitch so she _stays_ dead, but I’m guessing incineration would do it. No matter. We’ll figure it out once we’ve got her. That’s your part to play, Quinn. And then we’ll wipe out the plane. Screw the mess,” he looked up at Mr. Asshole, “since _your_ method worked no better than mine, we are still lacking the investor’s identity. Not optimal. We’ll have to root out which companies are involved through other methods.”

“Investors?”

Rue gave an exaggerated eye roll. “Oh, well, now that you’re _all_ dying, I guess it doesn’t matter, does it? Doesn’t matter that _my_ stake in the airline industry – a _massive_ stake, believe you me – is going to be ruined if this,” he gestured around the plane, “this, this, this _sustainable monstrosity_ takes to the skies in greater numbers? Doesn’t matter that _I’ll_ be ruined? I’ll lose millions!”

“You’re a billionaire,” Harley noted dully. “You’d still have millions.”

“Oh, blah blah,” Rue said nastily. “Millions I have rightfully earned, stolen from my pockets.”

Harley looked towards the rich people and stage-whispered, “ _get a load of this dude.”_

One woman actually snorted. Rue wheeled around and pointed his gun at one hostage, then another. “ _Who said that?”_ He turned to Mr. Asshole. “Did you see?”

“Nope. Sorry, boss.”

Rue scowled. “You’re all dead meat, anyway.”

 _In for a penny, in for a pound_ , Harley thought. “You may not be a teenager, but you certainly act like one,” she informed Rue. Maybe he’d caught a fever while he was on the plane, because his cheeks were as red as apples when he turned to her.

“Shut up, Quinn. We’re killing you right after we kill your girlfriend, and then we’re killing all the rest of you lousy idiots.”

Mr. Asshole had a dopey grin on his face. He looked like killing was right up his alley.

“What do you say, Kendrick? Time to use Poison Ivy for target practice?”

Mr. Asshole grinned and lifted Harley up by the back of her shirt with an ease that indicated his beefiness was not merely for show. She choked a bit as the collar of her shirt bunched up around her neck. “Yessir,” he said. “It would be my pleasure.”

<><><>

In the forest, something stirred.

At the moment, Ivy was definitely giving off the vibes of a some _thing_ more than a some _one._ A vengeful forest spirit, gathering her strength. Her eyes were glowing a full green, the rags of her clothes sloughing off as plant matter formed layer upon layer of living armor on her body. The forest heard her anger and sang in response.

Her heart sang in harmony.

They didn’t need to come to her. They didn’t need to dangle Harley out for her like a carrot for a rabbit. No, none of that was necessary.

Poison Ivy would come to them.


	10. Rue the Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for some comeuppance

Mr. Asshole pushed Harley out of the plane unceremoniously by the scruff of her neck, his gun flush to her skull. “Hey, hey, gentle with the merchandise, bucko,” Harley said, hoping her nervousness didn’t show. An itchy trigger finger could mean her brains splattered over the sand, and that was not a sight she was looking forward to.

“Let me guess,” he mocked, “you think your metahuman girlfriend is going to save you.”

Harley, unfortunately, wasn’t sure. Still, she didn’t let the confidence in her voice flag. “Well, _duh_.”

Rowan Rue stepped out onto the beach behind them. “Hold her,” he told Mr. Asshole. “As soon as we take down Poison Ivy, you can shoot her.”

 _Neat,_ Harley thought sullenly. _Just perfect._

“POISON IVY,” Rowan Rue raised his voice, yelling towards the forest. “WE HAVE HARLEY QUINN. COME OUT AND GET HER.”

In the end, it was Rue’s own fault that it happened. He, after all, had provided an invitation.

The entire forest seemed to quake. Trees writhed, underbrush skittered forward across the sand, vines thickened and grew.

Harley looked at Rowan Rue. His face had gone just a little paler. She hoped he understood that he was in deep shit now. She hoped he knew he’d bitten off more than he could chew.

As if it was a red carpet unrolling, a wave of plants spun out from the edge of the forest, bearing down upon them. And then… there she was.

Poison Ivy walked atop vines that supported her inches above the ground, so it appeared that she was gliding across the air. Her arms, torso, and legs were covered in layered vegetative armor; she wore a breastplate of tropical bark, streaked red and light brown. The armor reached all the way up her neck and down to her feet; she wore a helm made of hardwood, her red hair flowing out loose from beneath it.

Her eyes were green and glowing. Fully glowing, so that Harley couldn’t see the whites of them – nor the irises, nor the pupils.

Ivy looked like a goddess.

Harley had only seen her like this a handful of times. Now, she couldn’t help but grin.

The cavalry was coming, and her name was Pam.

<><><>

Rowan Rue tried to shoot her. It was a valiant effort, but her plants rose in a wave to shield her and absorbed the bullets. His empty gun impotent, Rue dropped it. He was more than pale now: he was so white he looked diseased.

Harley could almost see his miserable thoughts running through his head like a hamster on a treadmill. He had not been prepared for this. He knew Ivy was a metahuman, but she was no Superman; he had _seen_ the bullets rip through her on the plane.

But this was no plane. _Here be plants_ , Harley thought. _Here be the Green_.

“STOP,” Rue cried, the fear palpable in his voice, “STOP, OR WE SHOOT QUINN.”

Mr. Asshole’s grip tightened on Harley, and she flinched as he shoved the barrel of the gun into her cheek. “Easy there,” Harley growled.

For a moment, she wasn’t sure that Ivy _would_ stop. But she did. Her lips pressed together in a thin line, she turned towards Rue – or, rather, her _plants_ turned her. She stayed still.

“ _Rowan Rue_ ,” she said, and her voice seemed to echo with something more than herself, “ _you do not deserve to bear the names of the Green._ ”

Now, Harley thought, should be about the time Rue should start running. He didn’t. “DROP THE…” she knew he wanted to say “weapon,” but since Ivy’s weapon was herself, he was having a rough time of it. “DROP THE ARMOR,” Rue finally decided upon. “AND WE’LL LET YOU LIVE.”

It was a lie. It was also an unattractive one, apparently. Ivy narrowed her eyes and reached a hand towards Rue. “ _Judgement_ ,” was all she said.

Apparently, that was too much. “SHOOT HER, KENDRICK,” Rue yelled, pointing at Ivy, and that was his mistake.

Mr. Asshole, ever obedient, shifted his gun away from Harley’s face.

She dropped in his arms, a deadweight, and flipped him over top of her, using his own mass against him to slam him bodily into the ground. She was on him in a flash, twisting his arm and slamming her heel into it. She heard it crack; his howl of pain joined it as it broke, and she was grabbing her gun from his hand and training it on him in moments.

Rue let out a rather girlish scream (not that screaming like a girl was _bad_ , Harley reminded herself) and made for the plane.

He didn’t make it there. Ivy swooped down on him, her vines wrapping around his limbs and stretching him out in a star. She reached him in moments. And, as dispassionately as was possible, pressed her lips against his.

Harley shot Mr. Asshole in the foot so he wouldn’t get any ideas and watched.

Rue struggled for an instant – just an instant – and then he was leaning into the kiss, hungry for more. More that Ivy would never give him.

She drew back, eyes still glowing, and whispered something in his ear.

Rue was so eager to obey her command that he nearly stumbled as he took off towards the forest. He raced towards the trees, his feet slamming hard into the sand as he ran.

“I saved Mr. Asshole for you,” Harley announced, and Pam’s head twitched in her direction. Ivy was edging on belonging to the uncanny valley at the moment, her every movement clipped and yet smooth. She did not speak until she was standing above Mr. Asshole; the plants set her gently onto the ground.

He looked up at her in terror.

“ _You shot me_ ,” Poison Ivy said.

“But I didn’t kill you?” Mr. Asshole phrased it like an open-ended question. Like the fact that she’d survived meant she would have a modicum of mercy in store for him.

She did not.

Ivy knelt next to him. “Shhhh,” she said, and she drew one finger down his chest.

Harley could tell her toxins were concentrated at her fingertip, because the cloth shirt he was wearing sizzled away as she stroked it; she brushed it to the side, and his chest was bare.

Most people wouldn’t have watched. Harley was not most people.

By the end of it, Mr. Asshole had exactly as many holes in his stomach as the bullets he had unloaded into Ivy. The only difference was that he would not be surviving the experience.

As the life drained out of his eyes, Ivy stood tall, casting her judgement upon him.

And the instant he was dead, she collapsed.

<><><>

When Ivy awoke, the memories of what she’d done were fuzzy in her mind.

It was always like that when she entered what Harley jokingly called her “avatar state.” (Ivy still didn’t know what that referenced, but she had an inkling it had something to do with a children’s cartoon.) She never got into the glowing-green-eyes, massive-expense-of-energy phase on purpose; it was something that happened _to_ her, not something she did.

Harley filled her in. Mr. Asshole was dead, as they both agreed he rightfully deserved. Apparently, Ivy had sent Rowan Rue careening into the forest, drugged up on a healthy dose of her pheromones. Ivy had a vague memory of telling him to collect a dozen maple leaves to gain her favor.

Harley laughed at that. “Oh, _man_ , Ives, that’s rich. In a tropical forest? He’ll be lookin’ forever.” She considered. “Or at least ‘til the mojo wears off. Hey, Red, why’d the avatar thingy happen this time?”

“They had you,” Ivy said simply. “That wasn’t allowed.”

“Aww, Ives. How romaaaantic.”

They sat there on the sand together, watching the colors fade from the sunrise. Ivy downed a few bottles of water – the ones Mr. Asshole had collected and stashed away under the mangled wing of the plane. Harley could tell by the stiffness in her shoulders that what she’d done had taken its toll.

“Hey, Red.”

Ivy looked at her. There were bags under her eyes and a spray of freckles across her nose. Harley had kissed those freckles so many times she was surprised she hadn’t memorized how many there were. “What is it, daisy?”

“You saved my life.”

Pam raised an eyebrow. “You saved mine.”

“Well, you saved mine first. _And_ more than once.”

“Harley, we can argue about this all day and it won’t change the fact that you’ve saved me more than I’ve—”

Harley kissed her. It was very simple; Ivy was being silly, so Harley stopped her. Seriously – what kind of supervillain tried to give someone else more credit than themselves?

Ivy melted into the kiss, her fingers finding the nape of Harley’s neck. The plant armor flaked away as Harley’s hands dragged up it, giving her palms space to press against Ivy’s bare back. It reminded Harley, fleetingly, of the cocoon making way for someone Ivy loved.

Harley pressed forward and landed on top of Pam – lightly, carefully, because she knew Ivy was still hurting and she was _not_ going to contribute to that. So she kept her weight on her knees and her hands as she leaned over Ivy on the sand, dipping her head so they could reach each other.

It was sandy, true, but it was also very genuinely _nice._ Exactly what Harley had wanted from this vacation: hot girlfriend, makeout sessions on the beach, and more! Not that she had factored in the falling-from-a-plane part, but still.

“Harley,” Ivy said, in between kisses, “you know we can’t take this all the way.”

Harley expelled a disappointed “hmm.” She was pretty sure her cheeks were already flushed, and the sun wasn’t even fully risen yet. “Any particular reason why?”

Ivy quirked an eyebrow. “You mean besides the hostages I’m assuming you left tied up on the plane in their underwear?”

Harley sighed. “Oh. Them. Yeah, well, I didn’t want to leave you. Besides,” she wrinkled her nose, “you’re the only one I really _like_ seeing in lingerie.”


	11. Is It Over Yet?

It took them a few more minutes to get up the energy to stop with the romantic shenanigans and go be effectual rescuers. Or, rather, _Harley_ went off to be an effectual rescuer, calling the Batplane and pulling a knife out of her bag to release all the hostages. One woman had screamed when she’d brandished it; Harley nearly stabbed her just for being so obtuse.

Harley paused halfway through releasing the hostages, reconsidering. “Hey,” she said, “which ones of you _are_ the investors?”

The hostages exchanged uneasy looks with each other. The ones she’d freed were rubbing at their irritated wrists and ankles; the rest waited patiently, still on edge. “Uh,” one of them said, “any particular reason?”

Harley rolled her eyes. “We just saved your sorry asses. You think we’re gonna pop off and shoot ya?”

A woman finally spoke up. She had salt-and-pepper hair and the faint ghost of hot pink lipstick on her mouth. “It’s all of us,” she said stolidly. “We all invested. That’s how we got tickets first.”

Harley paused and whistled. “No kiddin?”

“No kidding,” a man confirmed, extending his bound wrists towards her to be freed.

Harley finished ridding the passengers of their bindings and went back outside to Ivy, plopping down next to her. “Turns out we can’t rob _anyone_ ,” she said, only half-joking. “They’re all investors.”

“Investors in what?”

That was when Harley realized Ivy hadn’t been present for Rue’s villain monologue. (How ironic, that she had been on the receiving end of one of those for once.) She filled Ivy in. After all that, she figured Ivy wouldn’t want to go after the passengers; out of all the rich people in the world, they happened to be the ones contributing their millions to clean energy.

Ivy just lay on the sand, listening and soaking up the sun’s rays. She was feeling better by the minute – not _great_ by any stretch of the imagination, but at the very least not like she’d been put through a meat grinder. Vengeance did wonders for one’s constitution.

“They get a pass this time,” she said, not opening her eyes. “Once we’re on the mainland, it’s every person for themselves, but for now, we leave them be. Poor little things are stressed enough.”

“This has nothing to do with your energy levels,” Harley said, raising an eyebrow.

“Certainly not. Nothing at all.” And it was a testament to the fact that Ivy was feeling better that she smiled.

<><><>

The Batplane touched down only a few hours later. (“I’m not surprised,” Ivy told Harley, “everyone knows Bruce Wayne is sleeping with Batman.”)

They’d decided not to try to pass themselves off as normal passengers. Bats had fought them enough times that he was bound to notice; the Batplane was going to be a tight fit, anyway. They figured Batman was decent enough to leave them be, especially after he heard what had happened.

That is, if the passengers decided to tell him the truth.

Batman stepped off the plane and onto the sands of the island in full tactical gear, ready for a fight. He needn’t have bothered. Ivy and Harley were waiting for him, standing next to each other with their arms crossed.

“Batsy!” Harley welcomed him. “Glad to see you could make it. We saved you the trouble of a buncha paperwork and saved some people from an evil plot.” She pointed back at the plane, where passengers were chatting with each other in what tatters had survived the crash and the hostage situation. It made them all look so much more human. Not a Rolex among them.

“Quinn? Ivy?” He sounded perplexed. Maybe it was ‘cause Harley had decided he didn’t need to know _who_ was calling for help. She’d left that little detail out of her SOS message.

“How observant you are, Batman,” Ivy deadpanned. “Yes, we saved the plane. With as little collateral damage as we could manage. We were hoping that in exchange, you’d give us a ride off this godforsaken cay and refrain from imprisoning us in Arkham again.”

“We just wanted to go to Costa Rica,” Harley explained, trying to look pitiful.

Ivy’s eyes narrowed. “And I can guarantee there’d be a fight if you tried the Arkham route.” You couldn’t tell, looking at her now, that she was likely on the verge of collapse. Batman would have a harder time punching out Dwayne Johnson than he would taking out Ivy at the moment. But he certainly didn’t need to know that.

Still, they didn’t expect him to accept their proposition.

And then he did.

A few hours later, every rich person had been packed into the Batplane and Harley and Ivy had been dropped off in San José, Costa Rica. Harley had noted while they were flying that Bruce Wayne might’ve stolen some of his ideas off Batman; the seating design looked fairly similar to that of the Wayne plane, though fit to a smaller space. Ivy had noted nothing. She’d been too busy trying not to panic or to show discomfort where Batman could see her.

Harley made sure to remind her to tint her skin the right shade again before they landed. And then they were in Costa Rica, and Batsy was off to deal with the hostages (Harley was more than willing to leave the logistics of all that to him) and their vacation had finally, _finally_ , begun.

“Wow,” Harley said, peering into a streetside shop at the many trinkets and tchotchkes for sale, “we’re here.”

Ivy nodded. “Uh huh. We’re here.”

“Whatcha wanna do first, Red?”

Ivy’s response was so quick it sounded rehearsed. “Easy. First… I need a drink.”

<><><>

Alcohol didn’t work too well on Ivy, which meant she had drunk several men under the table before she started feeling the effects. That was worth it, though; it was a crude solution to the pain signals her not-quite-healed body was still sending up to her brain.

Just because she knew that, from a scientific standpoint, the pain was her neurons’ own interpretations of the stimuli she was receiving didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. After she was well and truly drunk, she and Harley found a hotel. Harley complained of the humidity – Ivy, for one, thought the water in the air made the country even better.

They spent the night making up for lost time on the beach. It was better, after all, with clean sheets instead of sand.

<><><>

Ivy strolled through the forest, letting the overwhelming essence of the Green wash over her like a healing bath. It was so peaceful out here, so clean; so much of the natural world promising to her that she would be all right. That what she was doing to save the forests of the earth would be well worth it. She looked up at the understory of the rainforest, smiling as she caught sight of several howler monkeys.

A glittering pool of cool water spread out in front of her; feeding into it was a waterfall fed from deep within the forest. It was a little-known oasis Ivy had allowed the plants to guide her to, a private spot in the midst of the jungle.

A flash of movement caught her eye. There – a quetzal taking flight. A rare sight, truly. She wasn’t sure when she’d last felt so at home in the quietude, so—

“CANNONBALL!”

Ivy sighed, massaging her temples as Harley dashed past her and took a flying leap off the bank. She whooped as she flew and landed with a splash. If the wildlife surrounding them hadn’t been aware that strangers were in their midst, it certainly was now. “ _Harley_ ,” Ivy said tersely.

Harley came up for air and gave a self-satisfied sigh. She tilted back and floated, kicking her feet lazily. “Ah, Red, this is fuckin’ _heavenly._ ”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, daisy.”

“Don’t be such a stick in the mud, Ives. Get your butt in here.”

Ivy rolled her eyes. She waded into the pool slowly, letting her body adjust to the water’s temperature. (Not that there was much to adjust _to_ ; it was nearly perfect.) She took it slow.

Or… at least, she tried. Before she could process what was happening, Harley was taking a flying leap from the water like a hidden predator, wrapping her arms around Ivy and falling backwards into the pool. The water hit Ivy at once as they plunged into it together, as did a full awareness of how little skin Harley’s bathing suit covered.

Ivy came up sputtering and, it must be said, blushing, too. “ _Harley_.”

“You love me.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Not for me,” Harley said cheerily. “And you don’t mean that.” She pressed a kiss to Ivy’s cheek and fell back in the water, dunking her head again.

Ivy let herself smile. A small, secret smile. “No,” she said, “I don’t.”

<><><>

They were relaxing on the ground next to the pond, stretched out in the little sun that entered the forest canopy over top of the water, when Harley decided she wanted another go. She leaned over and pecked Pam on the cheek, then stood up. “Cannonball again, I think,” she said pensively. “Sound good to you?”

Ivy was about to respond – a “no” she was sure would be ignored – when she was interrupted by a sound. A low rumbling – an unnatural sound. They both caught it, tilting their heads in its direction. East, by the look of the sun.

Ivy’s muscles tensed. “Please,” she said aloud, “please, any deity that exists and can answer me… don’t let this be what I think it is.”

“It’s our vacation,” Harley added. “Give us a fuckin’ break.”

Still, they struck out towards the noise. Because at this point, Ivy wasn’t going to say no. The position of May Queen, Goddess and Guardian of the Green, was not a part-time job.

The sound grew louder as they approached. Before they’d even gotten within eyesight of it, Ivy paused. Harley could tell she was reaching out with her plant senses; in a moment, Ivy recoiled like she’d been stung.

“Verdict?” Harley was almost afraid to ask. Ivy’s eyes were already narrowing, her face adjusting to the familiar weight of righteous rage.

“Corporation,” Ivy said. “Illegally logging. This is a protected area.”

Harley sighed. “So I’m guessing it’s up to us to protect it?” She’d left her mallet with their stuff, which she thought might be an excuse until she realized Ivy was already growing a baseball bat of natural material. It detached itself from the earth when Harley grabbed the handle, testing its weight.

Perfect. Because Ivy knew her and her preferences just that well. Ivy glanced at Harley. “Sorry, babe. Vacation after, okay?” Plants were already unfurling around her as she called to them; armor was layering itself on her body in leafy plates. She didn’t wait for it to finish forming before she was striding off towards the direction of the noise.

Harley shouldered her new bat with a rueful glance back in the direction of the pool, then shrugged, rolling her shoulders and cracking her neck. There were worse ways to spend part of your vacation than following your smokin’ hot girlfriend to watch her beat up a bunch of unsanctioned tree-killers.

Harley let herself get in the mindset. She followed Ivy forward. And she smiled as she said, under her breath – so only she could hear – “Well, then. Here we go again.”

\- THE END -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't our girls catch a break?
> 
> Apparently not.
> 
> Thanks for the hits, kudos, and comments! Let me know in the comments if you have any fic prompts I should consider writing and I'll put 'em on my list. Much love and thank you for coming along for this wild jungle ride 💖💖💖


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